How
about the Good cover, good blurb, good book
mantra that gets murmured thoughtlessly all over the
place, with no definition of what good means?

I
call baloney on all that. Only one thing sells, and
thats sales. Because we see more exceptions than
examples. We see crappy books selling by the bucketloads,
we see hideously lurid covers clogging the charts, and we
see literary geniuses wallowing in what constitutes the
workhouses of the indie era.

A
quarter million authors, with talent so similar as to be
almost interchangeable

Almost.

The
only difference I see is that some sell and others
dont. Now, 90 percent of it is luck, but it also
seems the people who get lucky are those who work harder
at the 10 percent they can control.

It
was true in Gutenbergs day and its true now.
The means are different, but the basics are still the
same. Unless people know you exist, they wont
sample your superfab product or ideology or art or
concept. Unless you have some value to your audience,
there is no worthwhile connection.

I
know a number of Negative Nellies who spend lots of time
telling me why things wont work. You
cant self-publish. You cant give away books
and then expect to sell them. Facebook doesnt work.
People who use advertising are cheating.

Well,
you know what? I want to be everywhere. Not to brag about
some meaningless rank, or to sail away on my yacht while
starving people wail on the docks. No, I do it because I
believe in my work. I believe my ideology is
compassionate and, although I am far from perfect, I
think human existence matters and that exploring the
ugliness and beauty is why we are here. Books and stories
are a way we can learn about one another and make sense
of this huge, random universe.

And
writers love their ranks and sales figures and proof of
how they are smarter than someone else, but you know
what? The reader is smarter than every writer who ever
put a quill to paper or scrawled mud on a cave wall.

The
reader makes sense of the story and brings it alive. The
reader works much, much harder than the writer. The
reader is the most precious part of the telepathic
creation of imagination.

As
a writer, dont you want to meet that reader through
whatever means possible? Sure, most things
dont work. But is it truly the
thing, or is it you that fails?

What
have you given your reader today?

What
have you done to make instead of take?

How
is the world better because you happened to string some
words together and shove them in everyones face?

Make
it matter. Then use every ethical, moral, and tangible
tool in your kit to make yourself visible. Marketing
without heart is just data. Writing without a reason is
just noise.

CREATIVE
SPIRIT is Scott Nicholsons revised edition of
the 2004 U.S. paperback THE MANOR. Scott is Kindle
bestselling author of 12 novels, including THE RED
CHURCH, DISINTEGRATION, LIQUID FEAR, and SPEED DATING
WITH THE DEAD. Connect with Scott on Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Twitter, blogspot, website or Amazon page. Hes also written The
Indie Journey to help writers find happiness in their
careers. Its available at available at Amazon, BN.com, and Smashwords.

(This
article may be freely shared, published, distributed,
etc. as long as my byline and the ending bio material
appeare with the article.)